10 tips to keep players afloat in The Flame in the Flood

Don’t engage with enemies until you can build traps for them. Trying to skirt around boars and wolves will get you killed, because they are much too aggressive. It’s okay though, because your primary source of food is going to be stacks of Dandelions, Mulberries, and Grubs (if you’re lucky). Trapping rabbits or taking down larger game won’t come until later. Scout can survive without them for a bit on a (mostly) vegetarian diet.

2. Make a trunk for your junk!

After you snag your first rabbit, it’s going to be tempting to use its pelt to make some natty new threads. WELL, DON’T. Hold off on crafting clothes until Scout’s made a pouch to increase carrying capacity. Trust me, hypothermia can be mitigated (somehow) by sleeping, building a fire, or even just hanging out in the sun. Even when Scout gets cold, it takes her a while to freeze to death, so focus on making sure you increase your item capacity first.

3. Take a breather.

Speaking of carrying capacity, you’ll be jumping in and out of your inventory constantly in The Flame in the Flood, but the game doesn’t pause for you while you craft or root around for items. Use the time you get immediately before departing or after landing to move things around in your inventory. Likewise, if you run into an enemy but don’t have time to craft some arrows or a spear trap, you can run back to the dock, craft whatever you need then go back out to take on the beast.

4. Move over cat-tails.

On traveler difficulty, it’s a good idea to store as many crafting items on your raft as you can before you go exploring, so that scout has plenty of room in her pack to scavenge. Playing on the more difficult modes can be a bit trickier because only the items in Aesop’s pack stick around, but the rule of thumb is: If it was difficult and time-consuming to acquire, put it in Aesop’s pack just in case you die.

5. What’s the beef?

Some animals hate one another. Boars and wolves will duke it out to the death. Snakes will spring for either if they get the chance. Knowing what animals reside where on the map can be useful if Scout’s in a pinch. Running through a patch of snakes, or past a boar with a wolf close behind will give her just enough time to get away before things break really bad.

6. Don’t eat that!

There are a lot of edible things in the wilderness. Most of the time, your inventory will help you decide what’s good to eat and what’s not, but occasionally it’s pretty ambiguous. Some items will increase Scout’s nutrition with a side effect that’s very rarely worth the trade off. Any negative status condition (self induced or not) requires resources that are almost always a chore to get hold of, so don’t eat anything unless it only has positive effects on your nutrition UNLESS you’re starving AND have a cure for whatever ailment Scout is about to give herself.

7.Learn to count.

In the early game, animals typically travel solo. Around the mid-point of the campaign, wolves will start to spawn in packs but they don’t always stick together. Before you go setting a trap and looking for trouble, do a little bit more exploration to ensure there aren’t more enemies waiting in the wings after you dispatch with one of their friends. It’s difficult enough to gather the supplies needed to take down a single wolf, much less an entire gang of them and there’s nothing worse than getting a kill only to find its resources guarded by friends that a hurt and starving Scout has no ability to deal with.

8.Nip it in the bud..

After Scout gets her feet under her and starts stockpiling items, make sure she has a at least one cure for every ailment that can befall her and that she applies it ASAP. That rash might just be itchy at first, but if it’s not treated with some aloe it can fester, creating much bigger problems. Likewise without being bandaged, scratches and scrapes will get infected and Scout will have to pray she tracks down some penicillin. Snake bites are the worst, and will kill Scout if not cured. PRO TIP: make certain that she boils some clean water with dandelions to help her get over that hump.

9.Take advantage of storms.

Storms might make Scout cold, but before she takes a nap to dry off and avoid the worst of them, fill up a few jars with rain water. It’s clean and it’s plentiful. As long as she drinks her fill and then makes sure her jars are topped off each time a storm passes through, she’ll have more water than she could want for.

10. Make these raft upgrades in this order.

First, you’ll want to make a rudder, as it will allow the raft to cut across rapids and avoid as much damage as possible, so Scout doesn’t have to waste supplies on patching it up. Next, make a shelter. Being able to sleep through rain storms, and without wasting resources for a fire or having to endanger scout by finding shelter isn’t even the best part of it. Sleeping on the raft will also warm scout up, eliminating the need to craft better clothes for much of the game. Finally, the stove is essential in allowing Scout to cook meat before it spoils, and to cook up remedies for snake bites right at home without wasting lumber on fires. As a bonus, you might want to increase the ship’s inventory, simply because scout can never have enough inventory for all the crap she’ll pick up along the way.